Debussy - Clair De Lune

From a piano player's point of view, Debussy is a true master of the composing craft. His pieces wash over you as you play, enfolding you in the various emotions - joy, sadness, surprise, peace - which are so deeply engrained in the music. There are pieces to suit all abilities, from the (for the most part) fairly easy Rêverie to some of the fiendishly difficult Préludes, for which the scores look like nothing you've seen on earth; and whilst the pieces on occasion may sound discordant and even simply bad at first, stick with them as every time you will in the end be richly rewarded. Playing a Debussy piece isn't about learning notes and precise regimented ...  Read the complete review

Debussy was a true original. Living at a time when the ultra chromatic, but still functionally tonal, music of Wagner was regarded as the leading light in the musical world, Debussy was almost alone in recognizing that this route was essentially dried up. Despite being phenomenally gifted for traditional harmony and counterpoint, whilst at music college, he decided not to be one of the crowd, and set out to develop a language of his own. Essentially Debussy's aesthetic developed by questioning the fundamental assumption of tonality, which had held sway ever since the early Baroque period, that harmony must be functional; ie the driving force behind music ...  Read the complete review